Along a snowy trail in a pine forest north of Colorado Springs, Istvan and Marietta Arany stop at a tree.

It is a tree adorned with ornaments and portraits of pets, precious lives lost over the years. The Aranys stop to add a picture: Gyuri the cockatoo and Larry the chinchilla — gone all too soon, like the hundreds of dogs and cats and horses memorialized on these evergreen branches.

The losses have been hard, Istvan says. “Really, really hard.”

Gyuri and Larry were family, after all. “They were very close to us,” Marietta says. “They are going to stay in our hearts.”

They will be remembered here where the trail bends in the woods of Fox Run Regional Park. For several years here, the people of Black Forest have known the spirits of their furry, feathered and hooved friends to live on.

That includes Lorie Morgan. She stops by just about every day of the holiday season while the ornaments hang. Her dogs are pictured among the smiling, slobbery faces: Zeus and Apollo.

There’s a certain feeling at the tree, Morgan says.

“I’m not even sure if there’s good words to explain it. … I definitely feel a connection. Like, I stop and literally talk to the tree and talk to my boys on the tree. And yeah, I get kind of emotional, because maybe I haven’t really felt it for a while or allowed myself to feel it.”

It’s hard to explain. Morgan feels something when she’s looking at all of the faces around her boys.

“You don’t feel alone, that’s for sure,” she says.

Lorna Goebel is often there to meet strangers. They’ll laugh and cry together. They’ll hug.

It’s hard to explain, Goebel says. “There’s just a lot of love on that tree.”

What started with one man hanging the Christmas stocking of his late golden retriever has become a tight-knit tradition of locals hanging their own mementos every holiday season.

There’s Layla and Maddie, the dogs cuddling up close in the picture. “Lived + died together, 2010-2022.”

There’s Roxi. “You left pawprints on our hearts.”

There’s Tobi. “Best. Dog. Ever.”

There’s Lacey, “a noble and beautiful soul;” and Abby, “beloved friend;” and Willy and Vinny, “squirrel patrol.” There’s Captain, remembered by a child’s handwriting: “You were the best cat ever in the world.”

There’s an ornament for Daisy Mae, the goldie who lived from 1998 to 2007. She was Gary Zoeller’s girl.

She died unexpectedly that winter of 2007, just before Christmas. She had taken her final walk in Fox Run Regional Park, her favorite place like many dogs and owners around here.

With a broken heart, Zoeller took Daisy Mae’s Christmas stocking to a little clearing in the woods where she would always run and roll in the snow. Zoeller left a note about her on the tree.

“I just wanted other people to remember her the way I did,” he says.

A couple of days later, he returned to find people added ornaments honoring their dogs.

“And a couple of days after that, more ornaments,” Zoeller says. “By the time Christmas and New Year’s rolled around, there must’ve been 30 or 40 ornaments on the tree, all these people remembering their pets. It was a real spiritual thing, you know.”

As the season turned, he felt so moved to take down the ornaments, store them at his home and hang them back up around Thanksgiving. He did it again the next year and the year after that, noting more and more ornaments. So the tradition began.

While Zoeller has since moved to Arizona, the tradition continues under Goebel and her husband, Jeff. The lifelong dog lovers and their adult kids and grandkids will hang the ornaments up the day after Thanksgiving and take them down at the start of the new year. The family’s latest ornament count was close to 500.

Lorna and Jeff will clean any that need cleaning, repair any that need repairing and, for the new ones hung by ribbon or something less sturdy, they’ll hook wire to ensure durability through December.

The couple says about 50 ornaments are annually added — lives lost on the year. “They bring you to tears,” Jeff says.

Their memorials were almost lost.

One day in 2018, the Goebels learned land-managing El Paso County had stripped the tree. A sign was posted, saying the “decorations” were against park rules and the ornaments could be retrieved from county offices. The Goebels drove straight there to have a conversation.

The county was sympathetic, but there was worry about harm to nibbling wildlife and about a precedent being set. “The next cause is gonna want a tree, and the next cause is gonna want a tree, and pretty soon it’s gonna get out of hand,” Lorna recalls the thinking.

This cause was convincing, the decade-long tradition heartwarming, undeniable.

“The fact that the tradition had been going on so long was a big part of it,” says Ben Dumakowski, a county parks supervisor. “And the fact that people were so passionate about it.”

There were passionate people to oversee the tree and make sure rules were being followed, as posted today regarding ornament size and banned materials. The rules are posted beside a brief history. “Seasons greetings from the spirit of Daisy Mae,” it begins.

The sign goes on: “As you look at this memorial you will most likely find yourself smiling and remembering a time in your life with a pet you were sure was just a 4-legged person.”

Morgan has heard the comparison during her emotional stops at the tree.

“It’s kind of crazy the number of people I’ve talked to and they’ll say, ‘You know, losing a pet is almost harder than losing people in our lives,’” she says. “Just because of the nature of the love. We’re everything to them, and all they do is give us love.”

Maybe it’s no wonder the tradition has grown to what it is, Zoeller thinks. Maybe it’s no wonder amid the constant troubles of life.

“So much stuff going on,” Zoeller says, “and it’s nice to know there’s something that makes you feel good, like the love of a pet.”

It’s something that strangers continue to bond over here at this unsuspecting pocket of the woods.

“It just brings us together,” Lorna Goebel says. “We all understand when you lose a pet, it’s heart-wrenching and raw. And to have a place to go celebrate them, it’s just a neat feeling.”

It’s a feeling hard to explain — maybe like that spiritual feeling Zoeller felt at the first sight of ornaments joining his. It can indeed seem like there’s something sacred about the place, people here say, as if blessed and protected.

The Goebels used to worry about wind and snow knocking down the ornaments. “They all just stay on,” Jeff says. “They never fall off.”

Many of them share a sentiment: “Forever in our hearts.” And so the ornaments remain, always there.